To Get Stronger
by Artemis Ignitan
Summary: What Solo was up to after the third game. Mostly serious. Mostly.


**(A/N): So. I was planning on writing a different future Ryuusei no Rockman drabble. Or even possibly get started on that x Ryuusei no Rockman crossover I've been thinking of. Instead I wrote this down after having an odd dream about it. I don't even know my brain anymore.**

**So. Uh. Enjoy. **

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><p>Solo gritted his teeth as he settled down into the Nanska Ruins to rest. He had to get stronger. He hated to admit it, but recovering the Mu Metal from Sirius would have been a walk in the park, compared to the target it had transferred to now. He had to get stronger, if only to be able to protect his bond to Mu...<p>

...Damn it. Now he was talking like _him_ again. He didn't know what had possessed him to acknowledge what the other boy had said to him as truth. Bonds were useless, fickle things that only served to enable the weak. He was not _weak_. This wasn't a bond. It was an obligation. To his ancestors, to his blood. To recover all Murian artifacts from unworthy hands. Including _his_, even if he hadn't intentionally stolen it. That power was not his to wield.

But how to protect those artifacts once he had recovered them? Somehow, this hadn't occurred to him before. But it made sense. If he had first established some sort of safe house to store what artifacts he had recovered, then Dealer wouldn't have gotten their filthy hands on the Noise technology. They wouldn't be traipsing about in a world that was best left alone, where only the strong should have tread. A place to keep them hidden...

The only lost place he could think of that was worthy...that was...

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It took several hours to locate the crash site. The surface of the ocean was not one for leaving marks, especially not the area of the ocean that was just above the Bermuda Maze. Searching for the site underwater was a tricky task. It seemed that the area's strange Denpa had even affected the direct area below it. While it hadn't penetrated as thickly as it had the air above it, it was generally harder to move around as Denpa in water in the first place, and that alone made it just as difficult to find the site he was searching for. Just as well. It wouldn't be a worthy safe house if it wasn't.

Eventually, he had found it. The shattered remains of the Murian continent. It had crumbled into many large pieces as Ra Mu had lost its power to hold it together in the sky, and the pieces themselves made a rather effective maze. However, the main temple was mostly intact, which was what he had been hoping for. It was there that the main protections, the many secrets of Mu, had been hidden. Never before now was he so grateful to the fact that the idiot woman Orihime had focused on nothing more than Ra Mu. After all, even if it had been a god, it was nothing more than a source of power. It had been the genius of the Murians that had brought forth Mu's many wonders, the way they used the tools at their disposal that had won them their rightful place in history before its shameful downfall.

And of course, as geniuses, the Mu had enacted many protections to prevent others from stealing their work and using it against them. After all, the crash site of the Murian continent was easily locatable, thanks to _him_ and those idiots broadcasting his efforts. Many expeditions had been made to attempt to search the ruins for any lost history. None were successful. Those perfect protections, however, faded away after recognizing his blood, opening up the many lost wonders of their world to him and him alone. This was _perfect._

With these technologies, unknown to the modern-day world, Solo would rebuild this temple and hide it from view. Nothing would disturb it. No one would steal Mu's treasures away again.

Nothing would tarnish this sacred ground.

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It took many weeks of work to make the temple into something suitable for his demands.

The first and most important task was to establish a dry area with renewable oxygen. As possible as it was to completely live underwater as nothing but Denpa, being a Denpa-Human all the time was tiring and a waste of needed energy. The water would erode further at any physical objects he might find. To do that, he had to rebuild the temple from its cracked foundations, make it sturdy and resistant to the water's effects. This alone took up the majority of the time he had spent creating the safe house.

Afterwards, reinforcing the walls and rooms with special Denpa networks was a simple task. A network to make the stone impervious to water. A network to convert the oxygen in water into a useable form, and another one to remove the excess waste. Piping, cleaning, repainting ancient designs, all was done within a week.

Next was reviving security. Murian soldiers were a good start. But extra detection networks, traps, and other lethal obstacles must be installed. Recovering some of the Murian life forms that had escaped as Mu collapsed was a trying task, but doable, and easy once they had recognized him as one of their creators' blood. There were even some experimental Noise protectors, made to forcibly entrap intruders in Noise Waves until they could be dealt with...or until they perished inside. It seemed ruthless, but it was natural for him to not hold back.

After all that was done, all of his recovered artifacts and notes and technologies were locked straight away in their new chambers. He now spent his time learning what had been denied him for so long, his rightful heritage. The story of his people, their trials and tribulations. Their innovations and stories and legends. Things that had never been told by any historian, or even the Orihime woman, because they simply did not have the right to know. These private things were bound by the blood of his ancestors, and he relished in this strength that he had gained alone in this solitary confinement. He was the last of his people. As such, he was obligated to learn all that he could from what was left him, and to gain from it in any way possible.

It was how things should be.

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An intruder. The alerts were detecting an intruder.

This shouldn't have been possible. It must have been merely something passing by. That was what he had hoped.

But whatever it was, it was inside the temple. And it was fighting through his defenses. Not struggling to get away. Not fighting to escape in a random direction. It was visibly fighting down and breaking through his traps, warriors, and walls, directly aiming for the center of the temple. Where he was. Where his legacy was.

This was _not_permissible. This had to be stopped. Perhaps it had been that experimental readjustment to a new protection he had trying out that had caused this breach? No, that was kept isolated specifically to keep it from affecting the rest of the protections. Not because the trial period had weakened him severely by draining far too much ambient Denpa from its surroundings to keep stable. Not at all.

There was a crash, and Solo-now Burai-readied the Laplace Blade, holding it with a shaking hand. He hated to admit this, but he was vulnerable now. This wasn't how things were supposed to go. He was supposed to become stronger with these trials.

There was another crash, and the door to his personal quarters blasted open. There was dust flying in the air, and as it cleared, his eyes first widened in shock, then narrowed in barely restrained fury.

_"YOU!"_

Rockman visibly flinched at his voice, and for good reason. Burai's voice was dripping with venom, and he had masked the small bit of satisfaction at seeing the blue-clad boy's visible state of exhaustion. Rockman had managed to break through, but it was obvious that it was not without a fight. There were visible marks all over his suit, the metal shoulder guards and helmet had dents of various sizes scattered about their form, and his visor had a large portion of it broken off, showing bruised skin and tired, red eyes.

"What-" and here Burai stopped, trying to rein in stray emotions. "What are you doing_ here_?" The pause had not helped at all.

"Ah, that is..." And here, Rockman had the gall to chuckle weakly, rubbing the back of his head even as Burai held the Laplace Blade up threateningly. "You haven't shown up for a few cycles now. I was wondering if something had happened."

And at that, Burai slowly let down his blade. Cycles? Cycles of what? He gave the other boy a searching look, stopping as his eyes fell upon the familiar crest that had emerged under Rockman's pendant-shaped crest.

Then it all hit him. The reason he had started doing this in the first place. The reason he was getting stronger. To recover all stolen Murian treasures. The Mu Metal. It was here, right in front of him. He could recover it and prove himself, all at once.

Except neither of them were at top fighting condition. Rockman was still exhausted from the death traps that had been scattered around the temple, and Burai was still recovering from that devastatingly wrong experiment. Any battle fought now would be a mere mockery of what should have happened, and it didn't sit well with Burai. Rockman seemed to sense this, and backed out of the fighting position he had forced himself into a few seconds before.

"...I'm sorry. I should have known that nothing would have stopped you from attempting to recover the Mu Metal unless there was something truly more important to you. You're too determined to let anything else stop you. Maybe next cycle..."

And he turned to leave, only to stop when Burai barked out his next words, almost like a command.

"No. You came here. You disturbed and tarnished the sanctity of this place. We _must_fight."

"Burai..." Said warrior internally winced at the pity he heard in Rockman's voice. He could sense it, he could tell that he was forcing himself to say this, his honor not allowing him to refuse this fight and yet still making him wince in disgust at the circumstances. He raised the Laplace Blade again, but the blue warrior did nothing, instead, looking down. The angle of the lighting made the red visor suddenly opaque, hiding one eye's expression from view, but the other clearly showed that Rockman was in deep thought.

Suddenly, he looked up, and the red eye was looking at him in...triumph? Realization? Mischief? It was hard to tell, and Burai was so lost in the few seconds it took for him to contemplate the mysterious emotion that he didn't see the eye suddenly shift to a brown color, and Rockman disappearing, leaving only Hoshikawa Subaru behind.

It was only the indignant and shocked sputtering of the boy's noisy alien that awakened Burai from his stupor, and he looked on in mute surprise as the boy simply took out a small device from one of his belt pockets. As he recognized it, he felt a wave of embarrassment that he quickly stifled down, and he never regretted more until this moment that he had let a moment of weakness reveal this small, shameful quirk of his to his sworn enemy.

"How about a few fights in multiplayer?" asked Subaru, as he held up his own copy of the Burger Quest game.

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At first, Solo had thought it would be no contest. He was a master at the game, and Subaru had only been exposed to it due to the antics of his overweight friend (Laplace had snickered something about "gingrbeefeatr', but he had studiously ignored that).

Then he realized that, having no friends, he knew nothing of the multiplayer system of play. This had balanced out Subaru's novice skills enough that they were evenly matched for the first few rounds. It was actually pathetic. Even the ever-wary and raring to fight War-Rock was starting to feel at ease and had even resorted to teasing him (Teasing Solo? He never thought that possible. Battle taunts were expected, but good-natured teasing? Never.) whenever Subaru had gotten the upper hand. It was too amiable and too much unlike how a proper fight should be.

When he had finally let out a vehement exclamation of disgust over how this situation was not appropriate at all, Subaru had simply gotten out a brand new copy of Taco Fantasy, (apparently, it was a birthday present and he had never gotten around to opening it), justifying it as a brand new battlefield to both of them that could keep up the tension. Neither of the two boys were still in any condition to fight properly, so Solo reluctantly agreed to it.

It took Laplace jumping into the cartridge and wiping out its memory (Solo really needed to talk to Laplace about that habit of his) to shock the boys into realizing that their "battle" had gone on for several hours and that Subaru was late for dinner. The cycle had nearly ended by this point as well, so there was no longer any reason for the other boy to be there at all.

Immediately, Subaru had transformed into Rockman in order to leave, but before he did so, he was stopped yet again by Solo.

"Wait." And Rockman did. He really need to stop being so damn trusting of others all the time. It would make Solo less ashamed to have him as a rival.

"How the hell did you get here in the first place?" Rockman gave Solo a scrutinizing look before he answered, and the Murian heir vaguely hoped that Rockman really couldn't sense the desperation in his voice for an answer, how his defenses could have been penetrated so easily and so soon after he had made them.

"This..." and here Rockman tapped at the fading crest of the Mu Metal, sinking back into his body."It led me to you." And then there was a smile and a chuckle.

"It binds us together, you know."

And before Solo could shout out in anger, in denial, of this new "bond" that Rockman was trying to insinuate that he had, this...rival's bond, or some nonsense he would spew out, the blue-clad warrior was gone in a streak of green light. Instead, Solo was left to grit his teeth and clench his fist, before losing himself in silent introspection.

Now that he thought about it, it made sense that Rockman would be the first and only one to find him here. Even if he needed the Harp Note girl's help to get to the center of the Bermuda Maze, he found and made it through Mu on his own. Even the Orihime woman, with all her knowledge and all of Hollow's power, could only find Mu by following him, and could make it through only through the power of the stolen OOPart.

Rockman was the only outsider that made it to Mu on his own. And he would continue to be so, if Solo had any say in it. Until the Mu Metal stopped leading him there, and was torn from his body by Burai's very own hands. And to do that, Solo needed to get stronger. Until he was stronger than Rockman, stronger than his Link Power.

Solo absentmindedly stared at his own console's screen, before flicking it on. He had to keep ahead of Rockman, after all.

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><p><strong>(AN): Why no, I'm not obsessessed with the aftergame scenario presented in Ryuusei no Rockman 3. The eternal battle that is destined to eventually end the lives of one or both rivals is nothing to be intrigued with at all. Nor is the odd humorous quirks that may or may not be presented about one said rivals. Nope. Not at all. :T**


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